If you have a few number Debian or Ubuntu machines, you may want to save some bandwidth and speed up package installations. This can be achieved with the help of
approx, which is an HTTP-based proxy server for Debian-style package archives. This tutorial is based on Debian 8 (jessie).
Firstly, install the approx package
apt-get install approx
After installation, you need to edit the configuration file of approx that is
/etc/approx/approx.conf. My configuration is like this:
debian http://ftp.tr.debian.org/debian/ security http://security.debian.org/
Change the debian mirror to your favorite mirror. List of Debian mirrors
There are some parameters for approx which can be seen with
man 5 approx.conf command. I did not change any parameter but you may need it.
I use approx for my custom debian builds with Simple-CDD so I don't need to change my
If you need, change your
sources.list file like this to forward the apt requests to approx.
deb http://127.0.0.1:9999/debian jessie main contrib non-free deb http://127.0.0.1:9999/security jessie/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://127.0.0.1:9999/debian jessie main contrib non-free
You will save bandwidth and time.
If you get
Clearsigned file isn't valid, got 'NOSPLIT' (does the network require authentication?) error when you run
apt-get update , uninstalling and installing approx may help you